1. Field of the Invention
The technical field of the invention concerns computer systems that perform automatic speech recognition (“ASR”), that is, computer systems that process and then transcribe, understand, or respond to human speech. The specific subfield is methods for improving user interaction with such systems, notably by automatically diagnosing faulty usage by the human operator.
2. Description of the Related Art
ASR concerns the processing of human speech by an automatic device, typically a computer, to transcribe, understand or respond to spoken input. Interacting with a mechanical device by spoken command is of course a great convenience. However, like human listeners to human speech, ASR systems are imperfect, and can commit errors in processing the speech supplied as input. Potential reasons for such errors include the presence of excessive environmental or channel noise in the audio input, speech that is heavily accented, use of words that are not known to the ASR system, faulty control or use of the system by the human operator, and other problems. Any one or more of these can cause the ASR system to function less than perfectly, that is, to transcribe one or more words incorrectly, to respond incorrectly to a spoken command, or not to respond at all.
As discussed below in greater detail, this disclosure introduces features designed to improve the performance of such systems by automatically diagnosing, from the audio input, certain common operating faults that human operators are likely to commit, and advising them of the faults and/or how to avoid these same faults in the future. This is distinct from most related or prior art in the area, as most related or prior inventions have concentrated on improving the ASR accuracy on a particular utterance.